The use of child-resistant packaging is well-known in the art and utilized for many different types of goods. Such packaging is used primarily for those products which present a potential hazard in the hands of children--i.e., medicaments, and the like, as well as potentially less dangerous but troublesome contents, such as cosmetic compact ingredients. Many pharmaceutical products are packaged in the form of pills or tablets sealed in blister packages. A container for storage and dispensing of tablets from a blister pack should have a low aspect ratio, typically a rectangular outline and generally, for convenience, be of a hand-held size. The same is true if the container is to be used as a cosmetic compact case.
In designing child-resistant packages, it is also important that the package can be opened without undue difficulty by the average consumer for whom the product is intended, and particularly for the elderly. Thus packaging which relies on a certain amount of strength to open is often self-defeating in that the interested end user may find it difficult or impossible to open such packaging. Additionally the elderly often find it difficult to open blister packages to access tablets encased therein. Accordingly, such containers and dispensers for tablets may have the floor of the container apertured, and the container designed to receive a multi-blister pill pack with the blisters in registry with the apertures. This enables dispensing of individual tablets from their individual blisterpack compartments by push down from above to thereby rupture the thin barrier film provided on the underside of the blister pack and thus expel the tablet through the associated bottom wall hole of the container. The base of the container thus has a plurality of holes which conform to the spacing and size of the individual blister-pack and blister-pack compartments.
Typically, such containers are designed with a base and a cover connected thereto along one edge by a hinge structure, and are further provided with closure systems in which various of types of latches that require the application of predetermined forces by using the fingers of two hands, either simultaneously or successively in a coordinated manner, thereby making the container difficult to open by children. Examples of such structures in the prior art are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,219,116; 5,275,291; 5,346,069; and 5,740,938, as well as in many of the references cited as prior art therein.